What Shapes The World
by Leni
Summary: Set during 2x01. Belle goes for a long walk. "Belle is a block away from the pawnshop when she realizes she has nowhere to go."


Written for **yuidirnt** at **comment_fic**.

**Prompt:** _when I say that I'll go but in the end I stay / it's because I'm sure my life is by your side._

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><p><strong>WHAT SHAPES THE WORLD<br>**

_by Leni_

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><p>Belle is a block away from the pawnshop when she realizes she has nowhere to go, that this is completely different from the last time she walked away from Rumpelstiltskin. Not because she's less angry or less disappointed, but because the world has grown unfamiliar by more than the months spent shut away as Rumpelstiltskin's caretaker.<p>

She looks around, and the only thing she recognizes is the destruction the wraith has left in its wake. Everything else - the lights, the noises, the small and bigger machines she's never seen before - feels even more alien to her than the powerful artifacts she encountered at the Dark Castle. Magic is normal, in the world she remembers.

But this isn't her world.

How could she not have noticed - _truly_ noticed - until now?

Because Rumpelstiltskin said it was a curse, and curses cannot be too strange for one who's lived under the same roof with the Dark One for a year and more.

Because, until now, she has not been left alone to take in the strangeness of it all. All the differences to the Enchanted Forest have had no chance to sink in until Rumpelstiltskin isn't here to explain them away.

Because, until now, Belle had one familiar thing to which to cling.

A sob escapes her, that she didn't think this through. That she didn't _think_ at all. Is this why Rumpelstiltskin let her go so easily, because he knew she'd have to go back? But no. Of course not. He's _never_ expected her to make her way back to him.

She might yet prove him right, Belle thinks, plunging on, determined to put some distance between the two of them, lest she runs back to him in her weakness. She refuses to give in so easily; she's spent too long at the whim of others to make herself a puppet of her own fears.

Whatever she decides, she will be stronger for it. (Someone has to be.)

It's not the first time she's cast herself into the unknown, after all.

She learned to make herself comfortable within the walls of the Dark Castle. She found her place with the most reviled man in their land, and she liked it. She learned to enjoy her life there. She would have been _happy_, had she been allowed to try.

What's a world without magic in comparison?

Straightening her back, Belle looks around herself again. But this time she notices the people who have ventured onto the streets, most of them glancing fearfully over the damage. Each one of them is just as much of a stranger to this world as she is, for all that they have the memories and she doesn't. They are all wondering what this means, that the Evil Queen has her magic back. That it's the Dark One who's brought it back into the world.

They all are afraid. Of _him_.

And she alone is not.

This new world cannot be too different, then.

Belle takes a deep breath and continues walking, turning that thought over and over in her head. If people have remained the same, then things can't have changed that much, can they? She hasn't been jailed away for so long that she's forgotten it's human needs and human wants that shape the world.

Their fears, too.

These people are afraid of the Queen. The Queen is afraid of Rumpelstiltskin. And Rumpelstiltskin...

Rumpelstiltskin is afraid of True Love.

(Belle laughs, and draws some stares, but they don't care who she is and, right now, neither does she care who they are.)

At least this time he hasn't _purposely_ pushed her away, she thinks. He just toyed with his words, as he has always done; he's kept to the letter of an agreement, because he finds the spirit of it inconvenient to his purpose. Just like when he stole away a king's daughter, meaning to turn her into a servant, and ended up spoiling her with vast libraries and smart conversations and her freedom.

It wasn't his fault that the girl was too stubborn to take his gift.

Just as it's not his fault that getting rid of the Queen is another gift Belle must refuse.

Because it was meant as a gift, wasn't it?

Belle slows down, trying to decide whether he intended the Queen's death to calm her fears or his own - and of course it must be hers. Rumpelstiltskin doesn't fear _the Queen_ when Belle's love and Belle's trust are ever so much more scary.

(And here she laughs again.)

Eventually she comes to a halt. Comes to a decision, as well.

Is it the smart choice? Probably not.

Is it safe? For her life, the safest. For her heart, she can only hope.

But Rumpelstiltskin _wants_ her, despite all his fears, he has thrown open the doors back into his life, and he's finally ready to admit that he loves her back, and, and...

It's not perfect.

_He's_ not perfect.

But he wants her, and Belle thinks he even needs her, for everyone else is too scared of him to remind him of the man he can be. And... and she loves him so much...

They can shape their world anew, the two of them together; and this time, they can both live in it.

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><p><strong>THE END<strong>

**18/10/14**


End file.
